Cold Dark Sea
by roughdiamond5
Summary: Zombie Apocalypse!AU. Leon trusts Emil until the last beat of his increasingly undead heart.
**This work came about because I'm becoming obsessed with an Of Monsters and Men song called Sinking Man and simultaneously wanted to write HongIce. I didn't find out until I bought it that it comes from the Walking Dead soundtrack (which I've never watched, because zombies scare me shitless, which makes it ironic that I wrote this at all).**

 **For those of you who know I want to write a HongIce: this isn't it. I was just overwhelmed with feels and had to write this.**

 **NEW: find this story on AO3 under the name snark_sniper.**

* * *

 _Cold, dark sea  
Wrapping its arms around me,  
Pulling me down into the deep—  
All eyes on me_.

* * *

"Shit."

Though Leon is the affected one—the wound on his neck throbs harder with every beat of his heart—Lukas is the one to say it.

Emil swivels around, his shoes squeaking on the hospital's linoleum floor. Leon doesn't realize the extent of his injury until Emil meets his eyes and turns as white as his hair.

The two brothers stare at him. None of the three of them can breathe.

"That bad?" quips Leon.

* * *

 _Leon's family would have left town if Yao had known the severity of things, but because he didn't, he barricaded them in the house instead. The outbreak felt so far away until it reached their suburb, and for the first few days, everyone treated it like a bad flu. Stay home, disinfect everything, let no one in, it'll all be over soon._

 _At first Leon treated it like a snow day. He stayed in his room, played video games, and pretended the occasional shrieks outside his window were from the Pokémon he'd collected. He didn't do his homework, reasoning that he'd wake up early and do it the first day his high school called its students back._

 _One day without school became two. Then three. The meals Yao cooked because smaller, his smile tighter. Yong Soo and Mei looked out the window more frequently, muttering to each other. Kiku absorbed himself in digital manga. When Leon got a chance to look over his shoulder, he saw nothing but stories of the undead._

 _Since the third day, Yao slept by their largest downstairs window with a bat. Someone broke through it between the fourth and fifth days. The next day, Yao shut and locked the door to that room and insisted that only he was allowed downstairs now. For the rest of the day he wrapped and re-wrapped his arm in bandages which seemed constantly bloody, and he looked increasingly paler and spoke less. When Yong Soo and Mei tried to change his bandages for him before they went to bed, Yao bit at their fingers and sat still at the top of the stairs. Neither Kiku nor Leon could convince him to take his usual post downstairs, so they all went to bed concerned but not nervous. Yao was unwell, but protecting them. They were fine._

 _Between the fifth and sixth days without school, in the coldest hours of the night, Leon woke to thumping at his door._

Wham.

Wham.

Wham.

 _Slow, steady, as if someone were using a battering ram. A very tall battering ram. Which stepped backward and thrust itself forward._

 _Then Leon heard the moaning._

 _Before he realized he was doing it, he was opening the window beside his bed. He popped the screen out expertly and slipped, barefoot, onto the small roof sheltering the garage. Two or three people meandered down the street, lurching in unrelated directions. Leon ignored them and slid across the inclined roof until he approached the window beside his._

 _Mei and Yong Soo had fallen asleep with the shades open._

 _Leon peered inside._

 _Mei lay in her bed, convulsing in her sleep as if possessed by a demon. Her right middle finger, the one Yao had bitten, no longer bled, but her entire right arm glowed grey and coarse in the streetlight. Grey streaks already radiated across her shoulder and disappeared into her nightgown, and were settling into her cheek._

 _Sitting across from her bed, Yong Soo's too-pale, too-blank face slowly looked up to meet Leon's eyes._

 _And lunged for the window._

* * *

"You—you—" Emil has no words.

"You might want to speak a little faster," says Leon. His mouth won't stop, why won't it stop? "I'm thinking we don't have a lot of time."

"Leon, you're…"

"How is the pain?" asks Lukas.

" _Lukas_ ," Emil spits.

"It's a scratch," says Leon. "I'll be fine."

Leon's shoulder tenses against his will. He wishes he could turn his neck, but if at first the wound was throbbing, now someone is dripping acid into it. He watches Lukas notice his left hand curl into a fist, channeling the pain in his neck and shoulder.

Lukas is staring at Leon, daring him to lie. Just like he did the first time they met.

* * *

 _Leon had thought to put on shoes. He'd thought to claim all the food in his room (plus a water bottle and some spare clothing) and shove it in his school backpack, ignoring the banging of the_ thing _at his door. He'd thought to text Kiku, wait on the roof for a response. Call Kiku. Hear the Thing hear the ringtone down the hall. Hear it retreat._

 _Kiku never answered._

 _Leon climbed to the ground using the drainpipe, slipped through several yards to avoid the Things, and made it to the convenience store across from his school before he collapsed crying in the bathroom._

 _He didn't know how much time had passed before he heard someone on the other side try the door handle. Not the same sound as the Things. Someone who knew how to use thumbs._

 _Leon kicked at the door without thinking the action through._

" _Mathias!" he heard a muffled voice call, as calmly as could be done. The voice didn't sound much more mature than Leon's own._

 _Only when Leon heard more footsteps advance did he realize that his kick didn't sound like something a sentient being would do._

" _Wait!" he called through the door when the footsteps stopped._

 _A heavy pause._

" _Leon?"_

 _Leon's heart skipped a beat. "Yeah?"_

Please be Kiku, please be Kiku.

" _You're going to have to open the door," said the voice._

 _Leon stood and did so, not caring about his tear-stained face. On the other side of the door was a tall blond man with hair that nearly stood up, and—_

 _Emil Steilson. Leon's quasi-crush, who constantly spaced out in English class and who sat at the edge of the cafeteria and played on his phone. He looked darker than usual, more sleep-deprived, but his eyes met Leon's with a wary interest that suggested they were meeting in far less dismal circumstances._

" _You know my name?" was the first thing out of Leon's mouth._

 _Emil scowled as the tall blond man—Mathias, most likely—looked at Emil with raised eyebrows and a smirk._

" _Of course I know your name," said Emil._

" _Emil?" called another voice. "Mathias?"_

 _Another blond man approached from down the aisle, a camping backpack slung over his back and rattling with cans of food. His hair was a shade darker than Emil's and in the same style. Leon did a double-take at the modern-looking rifle held upright in his hand. Come to think of it, Mathias was carrying one too. Only Emil looked unarmed._

" _Who's this?" asked the man, stopping in front of Leon. The three bodies, all varying degrees of taller-than-him, practically pinned Leon to the bathroom door behind him._

" _C'mon, Lukas, you know," said Mathias, raising his eyebrows suggestively. "Emil's talked about him. It's_ Leon. _"_

 _Lukas took a deeper look at Leon, who in turn glanced to Emil in supplication. Emil stared back at Leon, his expression becoming increasingly less embarrassed as he took in Leon's sleeping sweatpants and shirt, his hastily-stuffed backpack, and his puffy eyes._

" _Where's the rest of your family?" he asked._

 _Leon took a shuddering breath._

" _You're alone?" asked Lukas. His expression remained suspicious, but his voice softened as he addressed Leon._

 _Leon's voice worked its way around the lump in his throat. "I guess."_

 _Mathias and Lukas exchanged looks. Mathias gave expressions, and Lukas somehow responded with only his eyes. Emil and Leon watched them._

 _Finally, tacitly, some agreement was reached. Lukas was the first to move out, back to the aisle where he'd been searching the floors for food. Mathias nodded, and stepped back to the refrigerators to scrounge for bottles._

 _Emil turned to cock his head at Leon._

" _That means you can come with us, if you want."_

* * *

"Too close to the heart," Lukas says, taking a closer look at Leon's bite. His tone is clipped and clinical. Leon learned early in their travels that before the Things tore apart their lives, Lukas had been on the pre-med path at university. He would know. "The venom will spread fast."

Leon agrees, though he hates to. Not for sake of arguing with Lukas, but because his left arm is starting to go numb. His fist remains clenched.

"Leon, are you—" Emil looks like he wants to ask if Leon is alright. It's just what they say, when they scavenge together. So far, the answer has always been yes. Even when it wasn't.

"Hungry?" asks Leon. "No." But tired. So tired.

"Gravity helps, right?" Emil asks Lukas, grasping for some sort of comfort. "It should spread downward first."

"Emil, no," says Lukas in the gentlest, most regretful scold Leon has ever heard him give. He won't look either Emil or Leon in the eye. "The heart pumps blood equally in all directions."

"Then he won't walk yet, but he'll—" Emil takes a shuddering breath.

The hand that Leon can still feel reaches for Emil's.

"We'll have to find a good place to put me," he says quietly.

* * *

" _Lukas and Mathias are dating, you know."_

" _Okay."_

 _Leon and his newfound—tribe? Band? Family? Who were these people to him?—were miles away from town. They were heading west, to the mountain cabin owned by Mathias's cousin Berwald and Tino, his "wife". (Leon didn't understand why Mathias thought that title was so funny, but was fine with keeping his head down and letting Mathias do all the talking.)_

 _For the first time since Leon had joined them, around two weeks ago, he was trusted to go scavenging with Emil. Lukas insisted that no one be alone at any time, but he often assigned himself or Mathias to attend Leon. As if he or Emil needed chaperoning._

 _They were looking through an abandoned gas station while Mathias and Lukas figured out how to extract gas from the pumps outside. Leon saw them through the window trying to access the giant supply canister underground, several meters away from the pumps and their car._

" _So what?" asked Leon, circling the conversation back to Emil's first comment since they'd entered._

" _Just seems important to mention," Emil said, crouching down onto the ground to look for snacks that may have rolled underneath. He stuck his hand under and emerged with a roll of tiny Hostess doughnuts._

 _Both of their lips tweaked upwards as they looked at each other._

" _They met at university," said Emil as Leon ventured towards the cashier's stand. "Turns out Mathias was my old babysitter, so they already kind of knew each other. But I guess Lukas didn't realize Mathias was going to grow up hot. He had braces back then, and he was a lot scrawnier."_

" _So, like, what are you saying about Mathias?" asked Leon, scouring the drawers for spare snacks. "You think he's hot?" He found a chocolate bar and some trail mix in one of the drawers underneath a newspaper. He intentionally turned the headline side down so LOS ANGELES SUCCUMBS wouldn't stare at the next looter._

" _It doesn't count if I'm quoting Lukas," said Emil. He was on to the next aisle, one of three in the tiny store._

" _Do you think any guys are hot?" asked Leon as nonchalantly as possible._

 _Emil caught his gaze and raised an eyebrow. "Is this a sleepover or something?"_

 _Leon grinned. "Closest we'll probably get."_

 _The comment had more weight than he expected it to. Emil looked away and began rooting under the fixtures again._

" _It's not like I was popular enough for sleepovers, anyway," Emil continued._

" _Me neither."_

" _Liar."_

" _What?" Leon held up his hands defensively. There was a door behind the cashier's stand, unseen from the front door. Leon figured they had to have a stockroom somewhere. "You only saw me at school, and I was always sitting with my family," he continued, trying the knob. "I can't help if they're so loud it looks like I'm—"_

 _He froze, and then slammed the door shut._

 _The sound startled Emil, who looked at him questioningly._

 _Leon backed away from the door._

" _How many?" asked Emil, looking for all the world like he was talking about serving him pizza rolls._

" _One." Either another scavenger group had been here and locked the Thing inside, or the person the Thing once was had tried to spare some people from himself._

" _Did you see any food back there?"_

" _I don't know. Was I supposed to?"_

 _Stirred from the door's opening, the Thing inside the closet let out a moan._

" _Never mind," said Emil. "You get on the counter and open the door. I'll shoot."_

" _What?" But before Leon got the word out from his breathless lungs, Emil had pulled out a pistol from a holster that Leon explicitly didn't remember him wearing before. He'd checked, while Emil was changing clothes this morning._

 _Of course Lukas wouldn't send his younger brother unarmed._

 _Emil waved him in the direction of the counter. Leon eyed it as if it would bite, and then hoisted himself onto the counter dividing the cashier's stand from the rest of the store. Emil stood directly in front of the door, his stance abnormally wide and the pistol in both hands._

Does he even know how to shoot? _was the new thought running through Leon's head. He used it to distract himself from the Thing stirring on the other side of the door._

 _He sat on his knees and had to lean far forward to pull the doorknob down. He almost lost his balance trying to pull it towards him, but in a burst of strength, he yanked it open and hid himself behind it._

 _The first shot made the door shake. The second made a squelching sound._

 _Emil took a deep breath and loosened his stance as Lukas and Mathias came rushing in._

 _When they saw the body splayed on the ground, Mathias's face broke out into a beam. "Tino's been teaching you well, huh?" he said, and turned to Lukas. "See? I told you, Emil's fine."_

 _Lukas took in the scene—Emil turning to face his brother, Leon stock still behind a door, and a bloodied Thing on the floor, probably shot in the head for how Leon heard no twitching. Lukas nodded._

" _Good job," he offered, stepping over the Thing's body to grab the boxes of crackers stowed in the closet. Leon knew his congratulations were only for Emil, but took no exception._

 _He made a point not to look at the Thing as he slipped off the counter._

* * *

They venture further down the hallway of the hospital. Behind them bang the horde, moaning and ramming their bodies against the doors Lukas has barricaded with an IV drip holding the door handles together. One of them is the one who bit Leon.

Leon tries his best to keep up. Not to lurch. It's increasingly difficult, as his left leg is going numb, same as his arm. Emil matches his pace, his face growing steelier with every step.

"Who's doing the honors?" asks Lukas as they check for a suitable room. The rooms on this level are only labs. Leon wants a bed. He wants to pretend that he's going to sleep. He hasn't told them so yet, but he thinks that at least Lukas knows so.

"The honors?" Emil's voice breaks.

"You're a good shot," says Leon, looking straight ahead but definitely speaking to Emil. "You could."

"Lukas is better. I can't—"

"I couldn't either," says Lukas, quietly. "But I did."

* * *

 _After the incident at the gas station, Emil teased Leon endlessly for having taken martial arts classes and never putting them to good use. Leon retorted that until he'd seen Emil take out the Thing through its brain, he wouldn't even have known where to hit. Emil called that a poor excuse. Leon didn't see how a sixteen-year-old with a pistol could talk about close-range combat. Lukas got sick of Emil's and Leon's snarking, and gave Leon the first weapon the group found, a machete found by Mathias when they stopped at a sporting goods store to look for bullets._

 _Leon made his first kill with that machete. Five minutes after he'd received it, when Mathias and Lukas went to find a tent for their trek into the mountains and when a trio of Things lumbered out from a display._

 _Leon heard Mathias's scream before he saw the attack. He flew onto the scene and thrust his machete into the neck of the tall Thing about to snap at Lukas from behind. He meant to decapitate it, but didn't expect the thick mass of sinews holding together the petrified flesh of the neck. The Thing turned around once Leon wrenched his machete from the neck. He stabbed it in the eye and rooted around for the brain, leaning back from its snapping jaws._

 _Emil was the last to the scene, taking out the second Thing with his pistol from a distance of a few meters. He wasn't so good at hitting moving targets, so he lost three bullets to it._

 _The last Thing had lost its legs in other fights, and gnawed at Mathias's ankle as it crawled on its belly._

 _Leon and Emil took Lukas's place pulling Mathias away, while Lukas shot his last bullet into the Thing's head. It collapsed, jaw going slack. Once the tension was gone, Mathias collapsed too._

" _Mathias!" Emil cried, falling on his knees to get a better look at his face._

 _Looking back, Leon blocked as many details as he could from his memories. The bare outline of the day seared itself into his brain. Being the shortest and therefore unable to support Mathias's frame, he had flanked Emil and Lukas as they dragged Mathias out of the store. He remembered that. Mathias had insisted that Lukas not leave him outdoors, not wanting to terrorize the next group of scavengers. Leon remembered that. Leon had picked the lock of a pickup truck so Mathias could sit in the driver's seat, strapped in but still able to watch the sunset. Emil and Leon sat in the truck bed while Lukas sat in shotgun. Leon remembered nothing of the sunset conversation, but he remembered that._

 _Mathias's blood had splattered on the back window when Lukas shot the Thing he'd become._

 _Leon definitely remembered that._

 _What he remembered most clearly was the awful keening sound Emil made when he saw the splatter, when he saw bright blond hair slick with gore and his own brother opening the door to the passenger seat._

 _The next thing he knew, with one hand Leon had pressed Emil's face into the crook where Leon's neck met his shoulder, while the other arm wrapped around Emil's trembling torso. They sat there in the truck bed, Emil weeping while Leon stared out into the grass. Lukas had taken two successful steps away from the truck before he fell to his knees. His hands clenched themselves in the grass, and his shoulders shook and strained._

 _Leon cradled Emil as close to him as possible. He knew it was impossible, but he let himself believe that the closer they pressed, the more he could protect Emil as easily as he protected his own body._

* * *

"This one."

Lukas stops naturally. Emil screeches to a stop. Leon is looking to a partially opened door on their left. They're on the third floor of the hospital, one up from where the Things are contained. Inside the door is a counter, its jars of cotton swabs and wooden tongue presses mostly intact. A twin-sized hospital bed sits beside it, and a window shows the mountain range illuminated by the sun. Sunlight spills across the bed and onto the floor, like a beacon.

He was so close, Leon thinks. From the plains, they made it to the front range of the mountains. Hundreds of miles traveled, and a hundred more to go. For Lukas and Emil.

Leon feels Emil's hand on his chest before he realizes he was about to fall sideways, in the direction of the door.

Lukas takes Leon's other side, the numb one. It's probably grey by now. Leon won't look. "We'll turn you," says Lukas.

Using Lukas as a pivot, the brothers face Leon towards the door. Leon's jaw is tensing, but not because he's gritting his teeth. The heart spreads the venom both up and down.

"How'm I looking on your side?" he asks Lukas.

"Like shit," says Lukas.

Leon doesn't doubt it. He's gotten better at looking at Things. He has to see their faces to know where to strike. He knows their grey faces filled with shriveling veins and cracks in their skin. He's about to be one of them.

"You always had such soft skin," says Emil softly as he pushes open the door.

"Past tense already?" says Leon.

For the first time since they've begun walking, Emil turns to look him in the eye. Leon can't look back—his neck is immobilized—but he senses the raw pain when Emil next speaks. "Please don't."

"You want on the bed?" asks Lukas.

"Yup."

Before Lukas can begin to figure out how to make it happen, a lightning bolt of pain bursts from Leon's neck wound and ricochets around his entire body. He stops the guttural scream before it can reach his lips, but Lukas and Emil both sense it and freeze.

When the pain finally abates, his vision is dimmer and he can't feel his legs.

* * *

 _Emil slipped into the car through the side door, and rolled to face Leon. "Do you regret anything?"_

 _Leon and Emil were sharing a mattress crammed into the back of their newest car. With only three of them approaching the biggest city before the mountains, Lukas insisted on abandoning the practice of driving at night, so as to keep all three people somewhat rested and alert. This meant, for three shifts each night, one person kept watch while the other two slept. It was Lukas's turn, the last before dawn, and he sat on top of their car with his rifle while the other two slept parked in a Denny's parking lot. Leon liked to imagine him staring at the stars. It was a better image to make up for the sobs he'd heard in previous nights._

" _Is this what you think about when you're on watch?" asked Leon. He was still groggy, having partially woken when Lukas left the car a few minutes ago to relieve Emil._

" _I think a lot of things. Answer my question."_

 _Leon paused. "I wish I hadn't called Kiku."_

" _When?"_

" _When the Thing was at my bedroom door. I knew Yao and Yong Soo and Mei were…yeah. But I tried to call Kiku, to warn him. The ringtone got its attention."_

" _Did he answer?"_

" _No."_

" _He could have left his phone behind. He could have already escaped."_

" _His window is on the second floor. And he doesn't have a roof to climb on."_

" _Is he a lighter sleeper than you?"_

" _Yeah."_

" _Maybe he heard something and woke up. And left."_

 _Leon wanted to believe it. He felt like he should have some intuitive brotherly knowledge about whether Kiku was still alive. The fact that he didn't, frightened him._

 _They lay in silence. Leon thought Emil's breathing had evened out, meaning he had gone to sleep, but then Emil spoke. "You're supposed to ask it back."_

" _Are we at a sleepover or something?"_

" _It's kind of like we'd have at my house. My brother just a wall away from us, listening in."_

" _Lukas can hear through metal now?"_

" _Just ask me."_

" _Fine. Do you regret anything?"_

" _I wish I'd told Mathias I loved him. I don't think I ever did."_

" _You're usually not supposed to tell your babysitter you love him."_

" _Well, I know that. After. When he and Lukas started dating."_

" _You're sure Lukas wouldn't get jealous?"_

 _Emil pushed him. Leon slid maybe an inch before his back made contact with the wall of the car._

" _I just wish he'd known," Emil said, quieter. "Even before the Things, when our dad left and our mom had to work. He was so good to us. For us."_

" _He knew."_

" _He told you?"_

" _No, he mostly talked about stuff he missed whenever we scavenged together," said Leon, thinking somewhat distastefully and somewhat fondly to the different brands of beer Mathias was aching to find. "But he's the sort of guy to just. Know. And to love you too."_

 _Emil let out a shuddering sigh. "Thanks. I needed that."_

 _Hesitantly, slowly, Leon pushed himself forward until his and Emil's faces were only an inch or two apart. He became uncomfortably aware that—despite that Emil hadn't either and therefore couldn't judge—Leon hadn't brushed his teeth since two towns ago._

" _I regret not talking to you more. Back then," Leon said._

" _School is such a long time ago."_

" _I still regret it."_

" _I don't. You wouldn't have been the same, back then."_

" _You like the guy who puts a machete in people's eyes?"_

 _Emil looked at him as steadily as possible, for lying sideways on a worn mattress. "I like the guy who trusts me when I tell him to open the door."_

 _Leon and Emil gazed at each other for a minute, relying on moonlight to search each others' faces._

 _Leon hated being shorter than Emil, if only by an inch or two. But at least lying sideways, he could adjust his height to cradle Emil's head against his chest. So he did._

 _Leon hoped he could convey what he was thinking by osmosis. Leon liked all the Emils he'd ever known—all the ones he could and couldn't talk to, all the ones whom he could hold and the ones who he thought never knew his name, every one of them._

 _Emil pressed a kiss to Leon's chest, right over his heart, and slung an arm over his waist. Leon would have to bother him for lip kisses in the morning._

* * *

"Comfortable?"

Leon isn't sure if Lukas's comment is meant to be funny. "Like laying on a cloud," he responds. Each word takes him considerable effort, so the sentence sounds gritted.

Without asking, Lukas places two fingers near where Leon's jaw hinges. His face, thus far neutral, contorts into the smallest of frowns before catching itself. Emil and Leon are both watching.

"Go 'head," says Leon. Words are taking too much effort. He's beginning to slur.

"Your heartrate is slowing."

Leon feels like he has a timer on his forehead, from the way Emil and Lukas look down at him. Only he doesn't know how much time he has left—he just feels it, every second seeping from his bones. He thinks Emil is holding his right hand, but if that's true, he can no longer feel warmth there. Or anywhere.

The right side of his face remains somewhat movable. He can still speak, at least. If only he had the breath for it. If only he knew what to say.

"Emil," says Lukas, still looking in Leon's direction but somehow staring straight through him. "Are you sure you want me to—"

"Emil," echoes Leon. He tenses his shoulders and his neck, and with the screaming pain of a wound on fire, he turns his head ever so slightly to center Emil's face in his field of view. "It's okay."

He's giving Emil permission to leave. He thought he was strong enough to keep himself from hurting Emil, but with the way his body is failing him, he's no longer certain of anything. And he knows Emil wants to leave, can see it on his face—

"No," says Emil. He looks ready to cry. "No, it won't be right."

" _Emil,_ " says Leon as forcefully as he can. He's relying on his tone to beg Emil to consider the weight of what he's doing, what he's risking. There's a small part of him, gaining strength—the Thing growing inside him, he suspects—that terrifies him, that makes him think that he's going to do something horrible.

"Emil, you only have the one bullet."

Leon's plodding heartrate thuds stronger, for a moment. Only one bullet. How will Emil and Lukas leave the hospital safely? There are weapons and bullets in the car, he knows. But there's a horde downstairs, and a flimsy metal bar keeping them on one side of the doors.

"Please," says Leon. Don't stay because you think you have to, he begs. Don't stay for me.

* * *

 _They reached the front range with a gash in Lukas's arm. He tore it open on a broken metal fence while running from some Things they'd encountered at a not-quite-abandoned grocery store. They decided they could probably also use medical supplies for their trek into the mountains, so they stopped at the nearest hospital._

 _The first floor was full of patient reception areas, and was deserted. The second floor held labs and primary care, which fortunately meant materials for stitches. Leon, having smaller and steadier hands, took Lukas's instruction in stitching up the wound, while Emil wandered the room they'd stationed themselves in for supplies._

 _As Leon sterilized the wound and wrapped gauze over it, Emil returned to the two of them with a bag full of various bottles of rattling pills and two first-aid kits. Leon pretended not to notice the bottle of antidepressants mixed in with painkillers and antibiotics. A surreptitious look with Emil confirmed that they were for Lukas, to be suggested to him later. Probably at the cabin, where they could afford to let their guard down._

 _Before they left, Lukas asked to check the single operating room down the hall. Lukas had only been training to be a nurse, but he claimed he'd feel much better with surgical tools available to him. Leon didn't know what circumstances would require surgery, but he couldn't blame Lukas for preparing for the worst._

 _Like all of the other rooms in the hospital, the operating room was too dark. Unlike the others, this room was too rustling. Within seconds of letting in light from the windows, they were surrounded by a dozen Things in scrubs and gowns._

 _Leon took out one, two, three with his machete. Gunshots rang through the air as Lukas and Emil took turns firing. A particularly close gunshot warned one Thing of Emil's presence, standing with his back turned to it._

 _Leon dove to stand between Emil and the Thing. He meant to use its falling momentum to run his machete through its eye._

 _He miscalculated where its jaws would land._

* * *

"I have to stay," Emil insists. Now he's wiping tears from his eyes with his bloodied sleeve. "Leon, do you really think I want you running around as one of them?"

"I can stop him," Lukas gently reminds.

"And—" Emil chokes back another sob. "And I want to know, Leon. I want to know you're not one of them. I want to know I made sure you were okay."

Leon's breath catches in his chest. Not from anything Emil said. His left hand just twitched. For the first time since he's been bitten, his hand has moved. But not by his doing.

His time is almost up.

Emil and Lukas see the twitch too. "We can't waste any more time deciding. If you want to stay, stay," Lukas says softly. Leon can't see him. His vision is growing dark at the edges, and if Emil weren't centered in his field of vision, if he weren't so pale, if he weren't glowing with the light of the sun shining through the window, he wouldn't see Emil either.

"Take this," says Lukas to Emil. Leon guesses it's Lukas's own rifle, which has more bullets in it or else Lukas would never give it to his younger brother. Lukas means to take the one-bullet pistol Emil has, to defend himself from everything between now and getting back to the car.

Leon wants to protest—he wants there to be guns and bullets for everyone, wants the Things to go back to normal, wants the dead to come back, wants to go _home_ to his old life and his family and talk to Emil without the end of the world prompting him—but he can't.

"Leon," says Lukas. His voice is close enough that Leon supposes Lukas put his hand on Leon's body. His shoulder, maybe. He must feel the tenseness. Leon wants to respond, wants to beg Lukas to keep carrying on, to protect Emil at all costs. He knows he will, though. He hopes he nods back at Lukas. The twitches are spreading. Maybe one of them passes for a nod.

The door closes, and he and Emil are left alone.

Leon thought he wanted this room for its view of the mountains. The noon sun bathed them in light, last he checked. Mathias died at sunset. Leon hopes noon won't be ruined for Emil, the same way Lukas insists on taking the last overnight shift so he can sleep through every sunset.

Leon thought he wanted this room to see the mountains, but now all he wants to do is look at Emil.

"I don't know what to say," says Emil, now wiping his nose as well as his eyes. "I should have something, I should really have something, but I just—"

"Shhhh," says Leon. It's an easy sound to make. If Emil is still holding his hand, maybe Leon's squeezing it now.

His right arm twitches violently enough that Emil takes a step back. So much for that.

Despite his body apparently convulsing, Leon feels calm. His brain is shutting down, possibly, because he remembers fewer and fewer reasons to be upset. Except for this: a white-haired boy is standing bathed in sunlight beside him, and he's too close.

Go away, Emil.

Leon's torso strains upward as his body tries to stand from the bed.

Emil escapes his field of vision. With nothing more to look at, Leon's sight leaves him.

He hears footsteps approach the door. He hears the rifle's safety being clicked off.

Emil is away from him. Emil is going to shoot. Emil is safe.

Leon leaves his own mind, the calmest he's felt in a long time.

* * *

 _Cold, dark sea,  
Your waves are rocking me.  
I close my eyes and fall asleep—  
All eyes on me._

 _Your eyes on me._


End file.
